Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • NOTHING Ends on Friday

    I want to recommend my wife’s encouraging Good Friday post NOTHING Ends on Friday. Sometimes we see holy week just as a commemoration of the past, but there are life lessons here as well.

  • Convincing Yourself of Falsehood

    . . . or perhaps of less than complete truth.

    Some years ago when I was in the Air Force I had a roommate who was an excellent software engineer. At the time I was a serious hobbyist programmer, so occasionally we would work together on projects. I remember a case in which he had a routine that would work when run under the debugger but would hang when run normally. After checking all the options either of us could think of, he could not conceive of any reason why it would do so.

    At this point, being more ignorant, and thus less certain that all the bases were covered, I suggested putting a delay into the routine at that point (I believe we used something like 1/100th of a second eventually). He didn’t want to do it at first, largely because it would solve the problem (if it worked) without actually discovering what the real problem was. Finally he did try it, it worked, and he released the code in that form, because he never did find anything.

    Now the point isn’t that I was a better programmer; I wasn’t. It’s not that I was more clever; I’m not. It’s simply that, lacking the ability to check off all the boxes I had to try some considerably less logical options, one of which worked.

    It’s very easy to convince ourselves that we have covered all the bases on a subject, or that the evidence for something we believe in very fervently is much stronger than it is. In fact, I suspect that the single most common reason why people accept a particular piece of evidence as reliable is that it supports a conclusion they like.

    I mention this because of a discussion about lying in science and other matters. Larry B made an interesting comment here, and expanded on it over at Quintessence of Dust.

    This all reminded me about a comment a political science professor once made to me when discussing conspiracy theories. “Never attribute to conspiracy what can adequately be explained by human stupidity.” I think he got that from someone else, but I’m not sure who. After reconsidering all this material, I might just paraphrase that to “Never attribute to lying any statement that can be explained by stupidity and/or the overwhelming desire to believe.”

    Perhaps Dr. Matheson’s term “folk science” is the best term after all.

  • Updating my Bible Version Selection Tool

    I have made two major changes to my Bible Version Selection Tool. The first is a new domain. It is now at MyBibleVersion.com. When I found that domain name available, I couldn’t resist paying the few dollars it cost to get it.

    Second, I’ve created a simplified version. The new page has drop down box that gives profiles by which to sort and score the version list. These are Neutral (simple list), Public Reading, Personal Study, Easy Reading, Literal, and Dynamic. To the right is a checkbox that allows you to bring up the old 11 item questionnaire. If you both choose and profile and check the “Detail” box, you will get the default answers from that profile for the 11 questions as a starting point.

    Remember that the lists of versions are inevitably a little loose. For example, is the NKJV, the ESV, or the NASB closer to the formal equivalent extreme? It depends on precisely where you check it.

    Besides the technical changes, the page is now optimized for an 800 x 600 screen rather than 640 x 480. I believe more people now have the wider screens, and this allows me to make the large amount of information presented more readable.

    Please check it out and let me know of any errors or glitches. I’ll be testing it a good deal more myself, but there’s nothing like comments from others to help perfect a new page like this.

    In the near future I will be creating a feed so that this material can be used on other web pages. Tentatively I’m going to use RSS, though it isn’t precisely designed for this. It does everything I need, and some other publishing/sharing protocols seem to be way more complex than I need.

    This new page is unde

  • Frank Schaeffer on Dr. Wright

    Frank Schaeffer has produced some stir with his notes supporting Barack Obama, and now he has written something about the imbalance between the response to Dr. Wright’s comments and the response to those of his, Schaeffer’s, father. He says:

    When Senator Obama’s preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father — Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer — denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

    I’m not going to try to make comparisons. But I would note that there are moments when many, many preachers have pointed to “God’s curse on America” for some moral failing or other. The question just seems to be who’s the pointer and who’s the pointee.

    I’m guessing a number of folks on the right are a bit annoyed with Frank Schaeffer at the moment!

    HT: Dispatches

  • Christian Carnival #CCXVI

    . . . has been posted at Crossroads.

  • Evidence that Demands a Kingdom

    Thomas an excellent post on Everyday Liturgy, titled Evidence that Demands a Kingdom. This is part of a series, all of which have been good, but this one struck me most forcefully so far. Go, read it, and check out the links to the rest of the series.

  • Distress, Lies, and Christlikeness

    I follow Dr. Steve Matheson’s blog Quintessence of Dust very closely, because as I have read what he posts I have found that he has a high level of integrity, and also provides an extremely high density of information in carefully chosen words. Recently he has been posting on the topic of just how one refers to false statements from people who ought to know better.

    I appreciate the attention he has been giving this issue, because non-specialists have no choice but to trust the integrity of credentialed scientists, at least in the basic data they present. Interpretation is always a different matter.

    Today he has a post On folk science and lies: Back to the basics, in which he digs further into this topic. It’s partially a response to this post by a colleague of his at Calvin College, Kevin Corcoran. Both posts are well worth reading. I provide the second link for those who may not follow all the links, but might I recommend you read this second post when you get to it’s link in Steve’s post? He provides a nice break point so that you can read the second post in context.

    I made the following comment, which I’m reposting here, again for the benefit of those who won’t follow the links:

    I think you are doing a good job with a difficult topic. The problem is in determining the nature of a statement and the intent of the author. Perhaps that should lead us to call statements “false” rather than “lies.”

    I still have a concern here, however. Remember I come at this from a different direction. I’m a Bible teacher and writer at the popular level. I try to communicate things that I study from more serious scholars. At one time I thought I could basically trust information from RtB, even where I might disagree with conclusions.

    What I hear from people in the classes and seminars I offer is that they are getting their information from Christian sources, and specifically from Christian sources who claim strong scientific credentials. These same sources are directly or indirectly accusing the vast majority of the scientific community of a conspiracy to deceive. Because of the claim to be Christian and scientifically credentialed, these non-specialists accept their claims.

    Hugh Ross falls into that category of trust. I can name any number of people with whom I work who will accept his statements or statements of his associates simply because of his reputation. What responsibility does that place on him? Is there a point where a qualified Christian expert (such as you, Steve), should call him on what he is doing?

    It’s not so much the word “lie,” though I continue to have difficulty understanding how a biologist could say certain things that have been quoted here on your blog unintentionally. At a minimum they seem to me to involve negligence.

    I take blog posts here, or books by Christian authors whose integrity I have no reason to doubt, and quote the counter-statements. Not being a specialist (it’s not written in Greek or Hebrew!), it’s hard for me to judge.

    But from my non-expert’s point of view, that’s what makes the issue of integrity so extremely important. Integrity doesn’t mean always being right, but it does mean being careful, presenting the truth as best one knows it, and acknowledging errors when they are pointed out.

    As I have been on the wrong end of some very unChristlike comments, and unfortunately I’ve been guilty of some myself, I’m very conscious of that issue as well. If we can be very, very clear as to what is reliable and what is not without going any further than necessary in making personal accusations, that would be ideal.

    I very much appreciate your efforts in this area. If you determine you’ve deviated from the path you set for yourself, you have also clearly demonstrated a willingness to be corrected and to acknowledge errors. All of that gives evidence of your personal and professional integrity.

    I remain uncomfortable with this topic, but I regard it as of great importance. I’ll be interested in any comments made here or there.

  • Obama Speech Transcript

    It’s available here. This is for all you other people like me who prefer to read something that long.

  • Causes, Excuses, Reasons, and Justifications

    I’m giving in to my tendency to write about broad principles rather than specific situations, though of course I’ll have to use a few specific situations as examples. I’ve heard this issue raised numerous times in numerous different situations. It can be stated this way: Does finding causes and reasons for an event or an action constitute justifying it or providing an excuse for it?

    We often encounter this in court cases with certain types of “justification” argument. Does the fact that a defendant was abused as a child provide justification for his or her criminal actions as an adult? It is very likely that the way someone grew up contributed to criminal activity later, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a good excuse.

    In politics I’ve heard this frequently in connection with the Palestinian situation. If anyone starts talking about reasons that Palestinians might be angry, there’s a quick negative reaction from supporters of Israel. Somehow we’re supposed to imagine that Palestinians are naturally evil and want to blow as many Israelis up as possible. If we find any reason for their anger and alienation, then we are justifying acts of terrorism. (Note that I refer here to folks in the United States, elsewhere in the world Israel is not so popular.)

    Similarly when we talk about the current war on terror, any discussion of reasons why people might hate us, why they might be angry, and why some might go so far as to try to kill us. But the fact is that terrorists are not born terrorists; they become terrorists. This involves the education to hate that can occur in their culture, but it also results from their experiences or those of folks close to them. Like it or not, if you blow up people’s houses and kill some of them, a certain number will become angry enough to be driven to be more radical than they are.

    The fear, of course, is that if we find reasons why terrorists have become what they are we will diminish the sense of them being evil, and provide excuses for their actions. This would in turn result in appeasement rather than vigorous suppression. But if we ignore the very real reasons why people become terrorists, we can quite easily design methods of responding to them that tend to produce more terrorists rather than less.

    I do believe that there are people who have become evil beyond hope of our doing anything to change them, so they must be dealt with forcefully. At the same time there are many people who have been pushed over the edge, and many sympathizers whose position has not been settled.

    That’s why any anti-terrorism policy needs to include both a diplomatic and a military option, and any anti-crime policy needs to deal both with enforcement and with the causes of crime. It’s easier to think of just one or the other; to propose that we simply hunt down every terrorist and invade and occupy every nation that supports terrorism. Similarly we can propose solely a diplomatic solution. Most unfortunately it seems to be easier to propose the violent solution than the diplomatic one.

    Similarly it’s easier to propose draconian penalties than to deal with education, economic issues, and the quality of enforcement (equipment, sufficient number of officers, and so forth) that might prevent crime before it occurs.

    If we use an examination of the causes to provide an excuse for evil actions, then there will be a significant danger. But we must examine the causes, and we must correct those that we are able, or we risk multiplying our problems as we try to solve them.

  • John 18:1-4 – Getting Christological Perspective

    If you’re acquainted with the synoptic gospels, in reading John 18:1-4 you may notice some substantial differences. What’s missing here is the time of tarrying and waiting, the prayer, any sort of agony or question about what Jesus was about to go through is gone. Verse 4 puts the different feel of the text into words when it says, “Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him . . .” (TNIV).

    So which is it? Was Jesus confident and in control, finally giving up his own life, or did he pray that the cup might pass from him? One could try to reconcile these by saying that he knew, but he also wished to avoid, but I think it’s impossible to read the passion story in the gospel of John without seeing a different picture of Jesus than the synoptics portray, always assuming that one lets John speak for himself, and each of the synoptic writers for himself.

    But I’m going to suggest that nonetheless “which is it?” is the wrong question. This is where we get into mystery. Orthodox christology holds that Jesus is fully human and fully divine. Human logic balks at the combination. When we think about Jesus we generally are either thinking of him as more human or more divine. Lacking an infinite perspective, we have to see something finite. In our minds 2 * fully (or 2 * 100%) is just too much to see at once.

    So we have different pictures in the gospels, because being written by finite people (inspired by God) and in finite human language, they can only give us part of the perspective at once. In John we see the divinity of Jesus in the foreground. In Luke especially (22:39-51) we see a much more human Jesus. Again, “which is it?” is the wrong question to ask. It is both, which is how the doctrine developed.

    When we see all the Biblical perspectives on Jesus we realize that he cannot be simply one thing. Various christological heresies have tried to make some one perspective be the perspective. But we can be sure that any explanation that makes too much sense, that makes it too simple to understand isn’t adequate to the task.

    I’m reminded also of God’s work in a person’s life. Who am I? Am I Henry Neufeld, defined by my history, my education, my actions in the past? Or am I a human being in the process of sanctification by the Holy Spirit, with Christ dwelling in me? I assure you that I don’t present the kind of challenge that Jesus, fully human and fully divine, does. But I do present contradictions, and I do look different when you look at me from the perspective of the work God is doing on me.

    In Hebrews 11 we have person after person who was called and used by God. The presentation of these people is invariably more positive than what you find in the Hebrew scriptures. Sarah is filled with faith, rather than laughter. Moses doesn’t fear the wrath of the king, even though he flees. I think Hebrews 11 looks at these people in terms of what God is doing in them, not who they were on their own.

    We can’t have a God’s eye view. God has the infinite expression. But by looking from these various angles that scripture provides, we two can see just a little of what God sees.